Publisher Battles Whitewater Subpoenas

WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, Aug. 27) -- Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr is battling the William Morrow & Co. publishing house for the unfinished memoirs of former Justice Department official Webster Hubbell.

Morrow's lawyers are scheduled to appear in federal court today to fight a subpoena issued by Whitewater prosecutors for the manuscript, according to a report in The New York Times.

Starr's office has subpoenaed the two publishers, the agent and the accountant who were all involved with Hubbell's memoir, "Friends In High Places." The book is expected to chronicle Hubbell's fall from the No. 3 man at the Justice Department to criminal, convicted of mail fraud and tax evasion.

"I have never seen a subponea this broad," Victor A. Kovner, the lawyer representing Morrow, told the Times.

The Morrow challenge to the subpoena argues that publishers also deserve a "qualified privilege under the First Amendment," to protect notes and unpublished material.

Starr's investigation has been very interested in Hubbell, a longtime friend and confidante of the Clintons. Prosecutors are investigating whether Hubbell received help from former and current members of the Clinton Administration in finding consulting work, in return for his silence on the Whitewater affair.